Statement

To devolve is to pass on rights, responsibilities, and/or powers, from one person or entity to another. It also suggests degeneration, possibly an entropic unmaking. In these works, I use thread and human hair to embroider images of particular animals, and in repetitive making (stitching, patterning, incising) manifest objects that are both recognizable and unsettling, hinting at the complex relationships we build with fantasy and reality. I work with hair because it is deeply personal, and at the same time a shared mammalian attribute. Its central role here feels a bit obsessive, fetishistic, and yet right. My material choices often reference the body, strong but impermanent. I find interest in works that are unheroic: quieter, contemplative, more likely to offer questions than provide answers. Many define this work as "feminine" because I am tapping directly into the historical, female lineage inherent in the histories of craft and art. However, all genders possess hair, and relate to its social codes respective to identity. I am interested in how social constructs of gender affect/influence environmental degradation. The “orifice” pieces are mandalas in composition and in the ritual sense: they represent an effort to reunify the self. The self, in this instance, has to be a self that is not separate from its natural, biological world.

Biography

Andy Mauery is a Maine-based visual artist whose work has appeared in national and international exhibitions, at venues including the Chaves de la Rosa Cultural Complex (Peru), MOBIUS in Boston, SPACES gallery in Cleveland, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Her grants and awards include an A.R.T. Fund Individual Award from Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, a Good Idea grant from the Maine Arts Commission in 2013, and an individual fellowship from The American-Scandinavian Foundation. She has been an artist in residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Vermont Studio Center, the Erik Nyholm Fondet in Denmark, and Tesuque Glassworks. She serves as an Associate Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Maine.